Barrage against Bawdiness

The remarks of ‘P.D.D.’ concerning the quality of contributions for the literary page have some validity – we would like it very much if only first-rate material were submitted. But in fact our main problem is not quality but quantity. Each week we receive about half the amount needed to fill this page, and there is a continual and disheartening struggle to make a balanced unit from fragments. Even after combing the wastepaper basket, we are often obliged to write at least twenty-five per cent ourselves. ‘P.D.D.’ seems able to express his opinions with some force. We suggest that he (and any other readers who have been irritated by the trivial content of this page) should look through his drawers for those long-buried manuscripts we all cherish and forget – or even write a review of some book he has read. Canta is no ogre’s castle or clique of long-haired aesthetes. The box for contributions is screwed to the wall below the notice-board and opposite the ’phone box in the Stud[ents’] Ass[ociation] buildings.

But regarding our correspondent’s vice crusade. We see no necessity to apologise for the mild and innocuous bawdiness of ‘Scrotex’ or the mannered introspection of ‘Gulls’. True, we would like something as full-blooded as Chaucer’s ‘Miller’s Tale’, as mordantly obscene as Byron’s epigrams, as sly and trenchant as Burns’s ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’, as riotous as Shakespeare’s tavern and brothel scenes, as violently scatological as Swift’s ‘Tale of a Tub’. But in this milk-and-water age we must be content with a few ashamed sniggers.

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And it is very doubtful if Canta could publish any of the master-works quoted above and escape suppression. Our correspondent has an eagle eye for the ‘doubtful’ phrase; we, of grosser calibre, had not noticed anything unusual until our attention was drawn to it. The test of what is permissible in this field seems to us to pivot on a question of form rather than one of moral rectitude. Namely – is the questionable comment an integral part of the entire statement or is it an anomalous parenthesis designed purely to shock? ‘Gulls’, we consider, goes free on this score: the fault lies with the reader’s unwillingness to identify himself temporarily with a valid standpoint not his own. ‘Scrotex’ may be censurable – but as an occasional piece it has the merit of being amusing and well-turned.

What we publish as Literary Editor and what we say in our private capacity to a Varsity Club are two entirely separate situations. Nevertheless we would point out that in the second instance we made no mention of Thomas’s reported liking for pubs. If the correspondent would take the trouble to read Thomas, he would soon realise that he was up against a writer of uncommon intellectual and spiritual stature. The ‘sex, death and sin’ theme is that of every considerable poet, mediaeval, Victorian or modern. It is interesting to note that while Tennyson and Swinburne were the anonymous authors of many of the bawdiest verses of the last century, the same is not reported of Thomas in this century.

We thank ‘P.D.D.’ for his obvious appreciation and close scrutiny of this page, and hope that he will find time and inclination to express his own opinions and outlook by its medium.

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